Thursday, September 27, 2012

This summer we signed up for a free online module in design thinking. Organized jointly by Edutopia, IDEO, and Riverdale Country School, the "Design Thinking For Educators" workshop invited participants to model the real process of iterative creation. Design thinking has been gaining traction as a means to foster critical thinking and creativity among learners. Teachers, in fact, can download a toolkit in the methods of design adapted for education.

The spring 2012 issue of Independent School magazine featured a detailed article about the prospects for design thinking to revolutionize standard classroom practice. In "An Experience Of "Yes": Independent Schools Begin To Explore and Exploit The Power Of Design Thinking," Peter Gow describes this mindset as "the posing of a problem, perhaps elegantly framed but more likely ill-structured or open-ended -- and with some constraints." This collaborative exploration requires "critique, testing, retesting, and redesigning until a breakthrough is achieved." In a safe, trusted setting, a feedback model that embraces failure is the ideal paradigm for student discovery.

One easy but surprisingly effective way to incorporate the steps of student-centered design is through the Question Formulation Technique (QFT). Rather than a multi-week project, this cooperative investigation takes one class period (or less) and empowers students to create a blueprint for their own curiosity. They ultimately chart the direction of their entire learning "unit."

The QFT applies to all levels of schooling and can be employed "to introduce students to a new unit, to assess students’ knowledge to see what they need to understand better, and even to conclude a unit to see how students can, with new knowledge, set a fresh learning agenda for themselves." The QFT basically validates students' natural inquisitive sense when starting new research or beginning to write an essay. It formalizes in a helpful way what can sometimes become rushed or quotidian.

With our eighth-graders at the beginning of this school year, we used The Right Question Institute suggestions to remind the group about last year's study of the Civil War and to imagine what life must have been like in the Reconstruction-era South for the population of newly freed slaves. The questions the class generated ranged from personal to philosophical. In the end, the group chose three guiding questions (in blue) to form the foundation of our next three weeks. We have returned to these questions daily, to ponder after new readings and to flesh out with primary sources.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

It's only fitting
that we share some infographics for the change of seasons. After all,
autumn does affect just about every aspect of our daily routines, from
the shorter day to the series of holidays beginning with
Halloween to the New Year. The infographics for the fall season reflect
this pattern, from what we buy to where and when to see the best fall
foliage.

Why not take
advantage of these data-rich delights with all their living color to
teach a little autumn trivia, devise a few math problems, or map out a
geographic trail across the United States for the best leaves?
There is plenty of information to go around, and it might even spur a
debate or two in comparing the details. No matter what your discipline,
mini lessons abound from these eye-catching displays of words, pictures
and numbers. Here are just a few of our favorites.

Raking in the Facts on Fall is loaded with data on everything from leaves changing color to the
optimal size a leaf pile should be before you dive in. Use it to
find out the number of tons of leaves falling in an acre or the number
of people injured due to leaf disposal. It's good for math lessons,
general trivia, or story starters. Another infographic from this site is
What Are People Buying In the Fall?.
Once again, this is a helpful visual to start a discussion on buying patterns
or making predictions. It also can be used in connection with
reinforcing media literacy skills.

Tap your students' knowledge of the United States using Indulge in Fall Foliage from Home Away
with its beautiful colors and engaging layout. Integrate the
information from this infographic with social studies classes. It's
helpful for understanding geographical regions, and with a road atlas,
kids can plan a trip using the detailed travel information
to route their way visually across the country.

We know that many kids suffer from allergies, and spring is no different from fall. The AccuWeather infographic on Autumn Allergies provides lots of details in a colorful visualization on ragweed, mole spores, dust mites, and more.

This one, along with Which Produce is In Season? from GE, provides lots of connections to science and math classes. The charts
about seasonal fruits and vegetables make for excellent resources to reinforce
graphicacy skills. Even our youngest learners can use this infographic with its colorful image icons and calendar data to decode information.

Essentially, sketchnotes are a form of visual note-taking, combining text and images. This is different from graphic facilitation, which is when one person listens to a group and graphically represents the key points of the discussion, such as with ImageThink and Ogilvy Notes.
To the contrary, sketchnotes are a personal form of note-taking. Both,
however, use the visual thinking process to design information in real
time through words and images to communicate ideas.

In most schools today, the current system of note-taking is a linear
process and, in many cases, a rote process as well. Too often, we have
students take down the information they need from the board, interactive
or not, via handwritten information or PowerPoint slides. The
interaction or engagement with the material is minimal. Sketchnoting is a
higher order process of capturing information. It requires a
combination of listening, thinking, and visualizing at the same time. It goes in a constant circular motion and pushes
the listener to funnel through the information for the most important
parts or patterns. By filtering out the noise, the sketchnoter learns to
look for patterns or an anchor around the main idea to focus on the key
aspects that support it.

Source: ASIDE, 2012

In the workshops we've taken, the instructor had us practice by
listening to a recording or video. Of course, the first line of
resistance might be "I can't draw," but with sketchnotes, you don't need
to be an artist. It doesn't take much practice to learn the basics
of using shapes as people, and with simple, hierarchical visuals, it's
easy to add images in the form of containers, icons, or connectors.

The
visual cues in sketchnotes enhance the recall process. The user
experience with information is broadened, execution is minimal, and
it opens up the design process to think about the relationship between
the text and image. Essentially, it's about organizing
information visually and arranging it in a hierarchy, and this spatial
arrangement of information provides a structural framework for the content.

Source: ASIDE, 2012

Since we've sketched out "The Axis of Education"
as a matrix for what and how we teach, our hope is to continue to seek
ways to build a sense of discovery in helping students learn. And in the
end, what they learn and how they learn can only be advanced by giving
them more opportunities to be creative thinkers. If moving them closer to thinking like a
designer can transform the way they learn, then sketchnotes is one
option we should try.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Is creativity an end, or a means to an end? In education, this question has no easy answer. At times, creativity serves as a vehicle for inspiration, while at other times, originality is the destination itself. For painters and poets, artistry is the conduit to new perspectives and phrases. For the basement tinkerer, innovation is the spark to invention. But schools do not produce inventions; they produce inventors. For this reason, to incubate the creative mind is a crucial role of the teacher. To foster imagination is a key pathway toward entrepreneurship and discovery. Ingenuity, therefore, resides in the upper quadrant of any educational schema.

(Click for a full-size version)

As teachers, we are in the process of putting together our goals for the new school year. At the top of our list is finding ways to nurture creativity in our students. We sketched out an "Axis Of Education" as a matrix to guide our development of lessons and activities. This coordinate system lays out the two variables of what we teach and how we teach, seeking an escalating ideal of skills and self-discovery. Since we try to guide our students in reading charts and graphs, it made sense to visualize our own objectives via an x/y axis.

The four quadrants within the matrix represent different teaching models, none necessarily better or worse than the other, but each distinct in the proficiencies it elicits in the student and in the roles it envisions for the educator. In the bottom left is the traditional classroom that relies on "ritual recitation," with a teacher at the front of the room and a host of facts to memorize. As the y-axis branches upward, the teacher is still in command, aiming for higher-order skills but maintaining a fixed, "one-size fits all" approach. Along the x-axis, the skills remain basic while the students enjoy freedom without guidance, risking a stabbing-in-the-dark, "pin the tail on the donkey" method. Ultimately, the upper right quadrant cultivates hands-on experimenters. By emphasizing original ideas in an entrepreneurial classroom, teachers create a laboratory of "experiential design," where children try and fail in the security of self-confident investigation.

In this blueprint, destructive teaching does exist. Heading in the negative direction are worksheets and scripts that might enforce rote facts but that undermine any expertise of the profession. Similarly, rushed units of study may result from good intentions, but the rapid pace and incomplete reflection time do more harm than good. Finally, standardized testing does the most damage. Not only does it vitiate every virtue of a teacher's training and passion, but it also chokes creativity and genuine learning.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

We try to layer logos into our daily teaching as much as possible. Not only do they subtly help students become familiar with media literacy, but they also add pizzazz to bland handouts and SMARTboard files. Mostly, we acquaint our kids with logos because they fortify such a range of curricular lessons. Students are already investigating actual insignia of western cattle and heraldic crests. They identify the trademark signatures of John Hancock and Walt Whitman, and the presidential emblems of the 2012 election go a long way toward conveying personalities and messaging. Students also actively need to brand themselves, to take control of their online profiles and their future dossiers.

A great activity for all range of age groups is to consider the "Branding Of America - Guess The Name." This fun exercise rewards the conscientious shoppers and the billboard watchers in our classrooms. It also helps our students become more attune to how corporations are targeting young buyers.

For a contemporary survey of creative promotions and crisp designs, we've been watching a 2011 video from the MSc Brand Leadership team at Norwich Business School. Entitled "What Is Branding?", this brief clip elegantly captures the fundamental concepts of graphic communication.

We also recommend two superb galleries of well-curated media literacy and typography examples. For further reading, we suggest the following resources:

Friday, September 7, 2012

Most students think of Labor Day as the end of the summer vacation, even
if some kids start school before the official holiday. It marks the end
of the beach season for sure. Yet for many, the true meaning of the
holiday gets lost in the celebration of a long weekend. Few realize that
Labor Day is considered the "working man's holiday,"
or that the term "labor" by definition means exhausting, hard, physical
work.

It was created to celebrate the vast majority of the American
population who provided the fuel behind this country's success as an industrial
nation. It was first celebrated in 1882, and in 1894 Congress passed an
act making the first Monday in September a legal holiday. We've put together a collection of Labor Day infographics in this post that can be used to engage kids
in a discussion during this opening week of school. They are loaded
with information for lessons in multiple disciplines. Like other holiday infographics we've written about in the past, they connect with calendar events during the school year.

While we are sure some kids might say that school is hard, physical
work, it pales in comparison to the occupations represented in the
infographics on the Most Hazardous Jobs in America from Zazenlife or the Workplace Fatality Data from the Huffington Post. Both identify the different hazards of occupations with statistical information on gender and ethnicity. The
data will surprise and enlighten students to the hard facts of what workers face.

The Labor Day infographic from Fast Company compares the job sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, and
services of the United States. In this visualization the data is
compared to other industrialized countries for 1971 and 2010. It also
provides the change in women's share of the labor force and unemployment
for the same years.

The catchy design for Labor Day by the Numbers from Fixr
uses a map of the United States to separate the different jobs and the
number of people working in them. Check out the list of Top 10 Work
Songs for the Labor Day BBQ or Top 10 Labor Day Movies and see if students
know what they are. A little pop culture goes a long way in any lesson. Ask them to take a guess as to what they think most Americans spend
their money on during the holiday weekend, too.

In a time of job uncertainty and difficult economic times, teaching students
the hard facts about labor history and the financial impact on our country
is important. It's fun to include the data on what we do to celebrate,
but it is sobering to see how many people work in dangerous and life-threatening occupations.

Perhaps the most
telling detail is how too few understand the true
meaning behind it. These infographics give us an opportunity to talk to
our students about the day as well as point out comparisons that are
necessary for our students to know. As resources, they provide a wealth
of data for lessons.